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Asia Foundation President David D. Arnold joined Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the presidential palace in Kabul last week to discuss the Foundation’s programs in Afghanistan. President Ghani praised the Foundation’s annual Survey of the Afghan People for its instrumental role with policymakers. They were joined by the Foundation’s Country Representative Abdullah Ahmadzai and Senior Vice President of Programs Gordon Hein. In separate meetings, Mr. Arnold and Mr. Ahmadzai met with Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah, who discussed the importance of the new Electoral Reform Commission. Read more.

Related Posts: Myanmar

Next month, Myanmar will host the ninth annual East Asia Summit, marking the conclusion of the country’s highly anticipated leadership role as 2014 ASEAN chair. Over the last three years, Myanmar has made strides in moving forward…

Since Myanmar’s President U Thein Sein took office in April 2011, the country has embarked on a dramatic set of reforms that have shifted the nation from one of the world’s most repressive regimes to this year’s Chair of ASEAN…

Less than one week after midterm elections in the United States, President Obama will travel to Asia to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum from November 10-11 in Beijing, and the East Asia Summit from November 13-14 in Naypyidaw, Myanmar.

By the end of 2015, the long-anticipated ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is set to come into effect, covering 16 countries, 600 million people, with a combined GDP worth of $2.3 trillion. While the AEC is intended to bring about broad-based economic benefits by creating a more competitive economic region…

Since Myanmar’s President U Thein Sein took office in 2011, the country has embarked on a comprehensive set of reforms. As this diverse, rural, and unevenly populated country develops, one of its major challenges is to create and maintain regional parity. In The Asia Foundation’s new paper “Catalyzing Subnational Development in Myanmar,” JICA’s Kyosuke Inada […]

Heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan and India since early September have resulted in some of the worst flooding in decades, requiring immediate relief response, as hundreds of people have already lost their lives and millions more are affected.

In last week’s In Asia, I examined how the rise of Asia in recent decades has been accompanied by a growth in deadly subnational conflicts (SNCs). These conflicts are occurring across the continent, including in middle-income and otherwise stable states. Democratization has not been a cure. Asia’s subnational conflicts last twice as long as those elsewhere in the world.

Asia’s rise has been momentous. Since the early 1960s, Asia has grown richer faster than any other region in the world. In 1990, 56 percent of people in East Asia and 54 percent in South Asia lived on under $1.25 a day (PPP). By 2010, these rates had fallen to 12 percent and 31 percent…

Publisher U Thant Thaw Kaung, head of the Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation and the mobile library project under the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, recently visited The Asia Foundation’s headquarters in San Francisco as part of a three-week study tour…

International data indicate that Myanmar’s current growth rate is about 7 percent, which by any measure should indicate progress and pride. Macroeconomic reforms have been extensive. The unrealistic legal exchange rate, which at one point was about 150 times…